The Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, now for the first time
reprinted in their original form, were collected and published by John
Donne, Jr., in 1651, twenty years after the death of the author.
Apparently the sales were not large, for three years later the original
sheets were rebound with a new title page and put on the market as a
second edition. Not many copies of the earlier, and still fewer of the
later date, have come down to us.

In the present volume changes from and additions to the original text are
indicated by brackets, with a single exception: errors in punctuation have
been corrected without comment when, and only when, they seem seriously to
impair the intelligibility of the text. In the case of a few letters the
reading followed is that of the original manuscripts, for which I am
indebted to the great kindness of Mr. Edmund Gosse.

Readers of Mr. Gosse's brilliant study , The Life and Letters of John
Donne (London: Heinemann, 1899) will not need to be reminded of the
obligations under which he has placed all later students of Donne's life
and work. I have, in addition, to thank him for generous encouragement and
for many helpful suggestions, specific and general.

C. E. M., Jr.

Huntington, Long Island
October 14, 1910.

LETTERS TO SEVERALL PERSONS OF HONOUR

[Illustration: JOHN DONNE

From an engraving by Pierre Lombart, prefixed to the POEMS of 1633,
after a portrait of Donne at the age of forty. ]

( Facsimile of Title Page of Original Edition. )

LETTERS
TO
SEVERALL PERSONS
OF HONOUR:

WRITTEN BY
JOHN DONNE

Sometime Deane of
S{t} Pauls London .

Published by JOHN DONNE D{r}. of
the Civill Law.

LONDON ,
Printed by J. Flesher , for Richard Marriot , and are
to be sold at his shop in S{t} Dunstans Church yard
under the Dyall. 1651.

To the most virtuous
and excellent Lady, Mris.
BRIDGET DUNCH .

MADAM,

It is an argument of the Immortality of the Soul, that it can
apprehend, and imbrace such a Conception; and it may be some kinde of
Prophecy of the continuance and lasting of these Letters, that having
been scattered, more then Sibyls leaves, I cannot say into parts, but
corners of the World, they have recollected and united themselves,
meeting at once, as it were, at the same spring, from whence they
flowed, but by Succession.

But the piety of Æneas to Anchises, with the heat and fervour of his
zeale, had been dazelled and extinguished by the fire of Troy, and his
Father become his Tombe, had not a brighter flame appeared in his
Protection, and Venus herself descended with her embraces, to protect
her Martiall Champion; so that there is no safer way to give a
perpetuity to this remnant of the dead Authour, but by dedicating it to
the Altar of Beauty and perfection; and if you, Madam, be but
pleased to shed on it one beame of your Grace and Favour, that very
Adumbration will quicken it with a new Spirit, and defend it from all
fire (the fate of most Letters) but the last; which, turning these
into ashes, shall revive the Authour from his Urne, and put him into a
capacity of celebrating you, his Guardian Angell, who has protected that
part of his Soul, that he left behinde him, his Fame and Reputation.

The courtesies that you conferre upon the living may admit of some allay,
by a possibility of a Retaliation; but what you bestow upon the Dead
is a Sacrifice to pure Virtue; an ungifted Deity, 'tis true, without
Oblation, Altar, or Temple, if she were not enshrined in your noble
brest, but I must forever become her votary, if it be but for giving me
this Inclination, and desire of being